Why philosophize about comedy? What is the use of investigating the comical from philosophical and psychoanalytic perspectives? In The Odd One In, Alenka Zupancic [haceks over both cs] considers how philosophy and psychoanalysis can help us understand the movement and the logic involved in the practice of comedy, and how comedy can help philosophy and psychoanalysis recognize some of the crucial mechanisms and vicissitudes of what is called humanity. Comedy by its nature is difficult to pin down with concepts (...) and definitions, but as artistic form and social practice comedy is a mode of tarrying with a foreign object--of including the exception. Philosophy's relationship to comedy, Zupancic [haceks over both cs] writes, is not exactly a simple story. It could begin with the lost book of Aristotle's Poetics, which discussed comedy and laughter. But Zupancic [haceks over both cs] draws on a whole range of philosophers and exemplars of comedy, from Aristophanes, Molière, Hegel, Freud, and Lacan to George W. Bush and Borat. She distinguishes incisively between comedy and ideologically imposed, "naturalized" cheerfulness. Real, subversive comedy thrives on the short circuits that establish an immediate connection between heterogeneous orders. Zupancic [haceks over both cs] examines the mechanisms and processes by which comedy lets the odd one in. Alenka Zupancic [haceks over both cs] is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Slovene Academy of Sciences, Ljubljana. She is the author of The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two. (shrink)

This book is concerned with doing exactly the opposite. Kant, thank God, is not our contemporary; he stands against the grain of our times.

The classic formula of disavowal given by Octave Mannoni, “I know well, but all the same,” undergoes interesting and far-reaching permutations in today’s social context. When it comes to dealing with and (not) responding to various crises, we usually point the finger at deniers and their “irrational” attitudes. However, far more common and socially problematic is the attitude that combines full recognition and denial in the same movement. Moreover, knowledge of a problem not only goes seamlessly with ignoring it but (...) seems to make ignoring it possible in the first place. Saying that “we know well” often enables us to ignore the real of that knowledge. Disavowal thus takes a doubly perverse turn, which is the focus of the analysis in this article. (shrink)

Series Foreword vii Introduction: The Event “Nietzsche” 2 I Nietzsche the Metapsychologist 30 “God Is Dead” 34 The Ascetic Ideal 46 Nihilism . . . 62 . . . as a “Crisis of Sublimation”? 72 II Noon 86 Troubles with Truth 90 From Nothingness Incorporated . . . 124 . . . via Double Affirmation . . . 132 . . . to Nothingness as Minimal Difference 150 Addendum: On Love as Comedy 164 Notes 183.

This article deals with the way in which Michel Foucault first introduced the notion of ‘biopolitics’ through the referential frame of sexuality and psychoanalysis. It focuses on the concept that is utterly and conspicuously missing from Foucault's account, in The History of Sexuality, of the psychoanalytic take on sexuality — namely, the unconscious. It argues that this omission has important and far-reaching consequences for the concept of biopolitics as such.

There exists a strange proximity between the seemingly opposed genres of comedy and the uncanny. In attempting to establish what constitutes their common ground and what distinguishes them, the paper examines the status and the functioning of "nothing" in one and in the other, as well the way "nothing" relates to the question of the real. It puts forward the thesis according to which the uncanny relies on the realism of desire, with its logic of constitutive lack (as transcendent nothing), (...) whereas comedy implies a rather different form of realism, namely the realism of the drive, with its logic of constitutive dislocation (as immanent nothing). (shrink)

As much as humanity has always been driven by the idea of conquering death, it is also haunted by the impossibility of dying completely; that is, by a possible persistence and recurrence of somethi...

Conspiracy theories are interesting phenomenon that cannot simply be treated as insignificant or marginal. Of late, some of the most bizarre conspiracy theories have been making their way into the mainstream public space, and into official politics. The most striking case is probably the connection between QAnon and the person and politics of Donald Trump. The article first analyses some of the reasons for some conspiracy theories becoming mainstream, and then proceeds to examine three crucial aspects of conspiracy theories: the (...) category of the big Other as big Manipulator, the passion for interpretation, and the inner link between making sense and enjoyment. (shrink)

Avtorica se v svojem prispevku loteva hkrati najšibkejše in najmočnejše točke ideologije, sklicevanja na »očitno«, »evidentno«, pri čemer »očitno« vselej zastira mesto, kjer je ideologija najbolj ranljiva — na kar je v svoji analizi delovanja ideologije opozoril že Althusser. Althusser ideologijo sicer poskuša misliti kot diskurz, toda njegova teorija ideologije vseskozi niha med dvema točkama, med ireduktibilnostjo ideologije in idejo »epistemološkega reza«, skratka, med tem, kar je in med tem, kar ni več ideologija. Na tej točki, kjer se Althusser znajde (...) v slepi ulici, si lahko pomagamo z Lacanovo teorijo štirih diskurzov, pri čemer nam diskurz Univerze ponuja »matem« tega, kar je neka osnovna ideološka operacija. (shrink)

Tekst ponuja interpretacijo kontra verze Kant—Constant. Kontroverze, ki jo je začel Constant v svojem spisu iz leta 1797, Des Reacton politiques, Kant pa seje nanjo odzval s kratkim tekstom "O domnevni pravici lagati iz človekoljubja", ki nosi isto letnico. Vprašanje "pravice do laži" zadeva tako problematiko prava kot problematiko etike, in v zadevnem tekstu se ga avtorica loteva z obeh perspektiv.

Tekst razčlenjuje specifiko mesta, na katerega je sam Kant postavil tretjo Kritiko in opozarja na nekatere paradokse, ki iz takšne umestitve izhajajo. V prvem delu je Kritika razsodnosti obtav-navana kot notranja meja na eni strani teoretične in na drugi strani praktične filozofije. V drugem delu gre za razčlembo specifičnega diskurza, ki ga Kant vpelje z govorom v modusu »als ob«. Tretji del pa izpostavlja nekatere paradokse Kantove teorije lepega.

Aucune notion déterminée de bien ne peut constituer le point de départ de l'éthique, le bien ne peut être que ce qui résulte de l'éthique. Car l'éthique diffère dans son essence du légal, elle est une production du bien et non pas son application. " Agis de telle sorte que la maxime de ta volonté puisse en même temps toujours valoir comme principe d'une législation universelle. " Quel est le réel que nomme cette foi, quel est le désir qu'elle peut (...) susciter, quel est l'objet qu'elle fixe au désir? Aucun. Tout le problème et tout l'intérêt de l'éthique kantienne est là : si l'on prend pour point de départ une loi qui n'est justement pas une qui nomme le Bien ou le Mal ni une loi qui pourrait immédiatement activer notre "faculté de désirer ", comment parvenir au réel de la liberté, où le situer, comment le repérer? Voilà la question. (shrink)

This paper explores some of the crucial ontological implications of the psychoanalytic theory of sexuality in its Freudo-Lacanian orientation. As irreducible to different sexual practices and contents, the concept of sexuality obtains conceptual weight that makes it particularly relevant for philosophical ontological thinking. Starting from the hypothesis that something about sexuality is constitutively unconscious - that is to say, existing only in the form of the unconscious - the paper points at the singular short-circuit of the epistemological and ontological level (...) which is at work in psychoanalytic theory, and which cannot be neglected in philosophical examination of the relation between knowledge and being. nema. (shrink)

The article investigates a possible omission within Alenka Zupančič conceptualization of comedy as presented in her 2008 book The Odd One In: – on Comedy. The lack which this work will reveal lies in Slovenian philosopher’s neglect of the conditions of possibility of experiencing comedy, which – we claim – hinges upon happiness, a state forged and conditioned by a particular relation with the “other” (the primal object in psychoanalytical meaning). In order to execute such investigation, the methodological (...) tool, rooted in both the theories of comedy and psychoanalysis, will be introduced: the navel of thought. This notion will make use of the reasoning of Sigmund Freud and posit the existence of a symptomatic point within any theory of comedy, that is a point at which a certain incongruence of the theory plays out. It is only when we are equipped with the theoretical tool of the navel of the thought will we proceed to find such a point within Alenka Zupančič book. (shrink)

본 논문은 성에 대한 존재론적 주장들을 검토하여 성이 존재일반에 내 속한 일탈이자 모순의 핵심임을 밝히고, 그것의 정치적 함의를 도출하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 최근 등장하고 있는 존재론과 실재론들은 담론과 문화를 물질보다 우선시하는 지배적인 철학 담론에 대한 반응으로 생각된다. 특히 페미니즘 담론 내에서도 주디스 버틀러를 비롯한 포스트구조주의와 사회구성주의에 대한 대안으로 다양한 존재론들이 등장하고 있다. 그러나 페미니즘의 핵심 개념인 성과 성차, 섹슈얼리티에 대해서 동시대의 존재론들이 어떻게 다루고 있는가에 관해서는 거의 논의되지 않고 있다. 존재론이 존재들을 가능하게 하는 원리들을 규명하는 것이라면 성에 관한 존재론도 마땅히 (...) 다루어져야 한다. 이를 위해 본 논문에서는 우선 최근 물질과 과학을 존재론적으로 구성하는 신유물론의 몇몇 주장들을 검토하고 그것이 성의 존재론에 어떤 정치적 함의를 주는지 확인한다. 그리고 성과 주체의 동시발생을 그 시작부터 집중적으로 논의해 온 정신분석이 최근 부상하는 존재론과 어떻게 대결하고 어떠한 방식으로 성의 존재론을 논하는지 살펴본다. 그럼으로써 인간중심주의로 퇴행하거나 물질을 간과하지 않고도 성, 주체, 물질, 담론을 다룰 이론을 위한 단초를 마련한다. (shrink)

Why philosophize about comedy? What is the use of investigating the comical from philosophical and psychoanalytic perspectives? In The Odd One In, Alenka Zupancic [haceks over both cs] considers how philosophy and psychoanalysis can help us understand the movement and the logic involved in the practice of comedy, and how comedy can help philosophy and psychoanalysis recognize some of the crucial mechanisms and vicissitudes of what is called humanity. Comedy by its nature is difficult to pin down with concepts (...) and definitions, but as artistic form and social practice comedy is a mode of tarrying with a foreign object--of including the exception. Philosophy's relationship to comedy, Zupancic [haceks over both cs] writes, is not exactly a simple story. It could begin with the lost book of Aristotle's Poetics, which discussed comedy and laughter. But Zupancic [haceks over both cs] draws on a whole range of philosophers and exemplars of comedy, from Aristophanes, Molière, Hegel, Freud, and Lacan to George W. Bush and Borat. She distinguishes incisively between comedy and ideologically imposed, "naturalized" cheerfulness. Real, subversive comedy thrives on the short circuits that establish an immediate connection between heterogeneous orders. Zupancic [haceks over both cs] examines the mechanisms and processes by which comedy lets the odd one in. Alenka Zupancic [haceks over both cs] is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Slovene Academy of Sciences, Ljubljana. She is the author of The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two. (shrink)

What is it that makes Nietzsche Nietzsche? In The Shortest Shadow, Alenka Zupancic counters the currently fashionable appropriation of Nietzsche as a philosopher who was "ahead of his time" but whose time has finally come -- the rather patronizing reduction of his often extraordinary statements to mere opinions that we can "share." Zupancic argues that the definitive Nietzschean quality is his very unfashionableness, his being out of the mainstream of his or any time.To restore Nietzsche to a context in (...) which the thought "lives on its own credit," Zupancic examines two aspects of his philosophy. First, in "Nietzsche as Metapsychologist," she revisits the principal Nietzschean themes -- his declaration of the death of God, the ascetic ideal, and nihilism -- as ideas that are very much present in our hedonist postmodern condition. Then, in the second part of the book, she considers Nietzsche's figure of the Noon and its consequences for his notion of the truth. Nietzsche describes the Noon not as the moment when all shadows disappear but as the moment of "the shortest shadow" -- not the unity of all things embraced by the sun, but the moment of splitting, when "one turns into two." Zupancic argues that this notion of the Two as the minimal and irreducible difference within the same animates all of Nietzsche's work, generating its permanent and inherent tension. (shrink)

In what ways is comedy subversive? This vital new book critically considers the importance of comedy in challenging and redefining our relations to race and racism through the lens of political correctness. -/- By viewing comedy as both a constitutive feature of social interaction and as a necessary requirement in the appraisal of what is often deemed to be ‘politically correct’, this book provides an innovative and multidisciplinary approach to the study of comedy and popular culture. In doing so, it (...) engages with the social and cultural tensions inherent to our understandings of political correctness, arguing that comedy can subversively redefine our approach to ‘PC Debates’, contestations surrounding free speech and the popular portrayal of political correctness in the media and society. Aided by the work of both Slavoj Žižek and Alenka Zupančič, this unique analysis adopts a psychoanalytic/philosophical framework to explore issues of race, racism and political correctness in the widely acclaimed BBC ‘mockumentary’, The Office (UK), as well as a variety of television comedies. -/- Drawing from psychoanalysis, social psychology and philosophy, this book will be highly relevant for postgraduate students and academic researchers studying comedy, race/racism, multiculturalism, political correctness and television/film. (shrink)

Cohle is at ease with his lack, and his ease enables him to remain fixated on the desire of the other. This is precisely what makes Cohle the better detective, indeed the True Detective. It is because Cohle himself is unable to experience guilt— the true sign of any noir hero. Gilles Deleuze argues that the core structure of the detective's search for truth follows an Oedipal trajectory. Sophocles' classic myth of Oedipus presents the basic structure of the detective genre. (...) Cohle develops a philosophy, specifically what is referred to as anti‐natalism, or the belief that human beings should not procreate. The Lacanian philosopher Alenka Zupancic points out that Oedipus was the first noir hero precisely because in Oedipus the hero is also the villain— the two become indistinguishable. Cohle can read the signs all around him, however he has surpassed Oedipus. The ending of season one represents the ending of Cohle's trajectory of a psychotic subject. (shrink)

This essay explores Jacques Lacan’s theory of desire as functioning according to the logic of tragedy and compares it with Alenka Zupančič’s concept of love as comedy, demonstrating however that the latter remains too caught up in the Lacanian worldview to truly capture the active side of love. The essay argues that Zupančič’s interpretation of Lacan can be reinterpreted again through the lenses of “messianic psychoanalysis” – psychoanalysis “slightly adjusted” – standing not on the side of the (...) tragic acceptance of fate, but of the promise of “more life.” Drawing from the reflections of Agata Bielik-Robson, Eric Santner and Jonathan Lear, this essay intends to demonstrate that Zupančič’s comedy of love can be reconciled with the more relational notion of love as a psychoanalytical counterpart of messianic Exodus. An example of such a liberating combination of eros and wit can be found in Freud’s interpretation of Wilhelm Jensen’s Gradiva. (shrink)

The “formidably brilliant” Žižek considers sexuality, ontology, subjectivity, and Marxian critiques of political economy by way of Lacanian psychoanalysis. If the most interesting theoretical interventions emerge today from the interspaces between fields, then the foremost interspaceman is Slavoj Žižek. In Incontinence of the Void (the title is inspired by a sentence in Samuel Beckett's late masterpiece Ill Seen Ill Said), Žižek explores the empty spaces between philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the critique of political economy. He proceeds from the universal dimension of (...) philosophy to the particular dimension of sexuality to the singular dimension of the critique of political economy. The passage from one dimension to another is immanent: the ontological void is accessible only through the impasses of sexuation and the ongoing prospect of the abolition of sexuality, which is itself opened up by the technoscientific progress of global capitalism, in turn leading to the critique of political economy. Responding to his colleague and fellow Short Circuits author Alenka Zupančič's What Is Sex?, Žižek examines the notion of an excessive element in ontology that gives body to radical negativity, which becomes the antagonism of sexual difference. From the economico-philosophical perspective, Žižek extrapolates from ontological excess to Marxian surplus value to Lacan's surplus enjoyment. In true Žižekian fashion, Incontinence of the Void focuses on eternal topics while detouring freely into contemporary issuesfrom the Internet of Things to Danish TV series. (shrink)

Only a Joke Can Save Us presents an innovative and comprehensive theory of comedy. Using a wealth of examples from high and popular culture and with careful attention to the treatment of humor in philosophy, Todd McGowan locates the universal source of comedy in the interplay of the opposing concepts lack and excess. After reviewing the treatment of comedy in the work of philosophers as varied as Aristotle, G. W. F. Hegel, Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, and Alenka Zupancic, McGowan, (...) working in a psychoanalytic framework, demonstrates that comedy results from the deployment of lack and excess, whether in contrast, juxtaposition, or interplay. Illustrating the power and flexibility of this framework with analyses of films ranging from Buster Keaton and Marx Brothers classics to Dr. Strangelove and Groundhog Day, McGowan shows how humor can reveal gaps in being and gaps in social order. Scholarly yet lively and readable, Only a Joke Can Save Us is a groundbreaking examination of the enigmatic yet endlessly fascinating experience of humor and comedy."--Publisher's summary. (shrink)

Cefalu offers the first sustained assessment of the ways in which recent contemporary philosophy and cultural theory -- including the work of Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Eric Santner, Slavoj Žižek, and Alenka Zupancic -- can illuminate Early Modern literature and culture. The book argues that when selected Early Modern devotional poets set out to represent subject-God relations, they often encounter some sublime aspect of God that, in Slovenian-Lacanian terms, seems "Other" to himself. This divine Other, while sometimes presented directly (...) as a void or empty place, is more often filled in and presented instead as some form of divine excess. While Donne, and to a lesser extent Traherne, disavow those numinous aspects of God that might subsist beneath such excesses, Crashaw, and especially Milton, attempt to represent the intimate relationship between any creature’s and God's intrinsic alterity. Cefalu introduces new ways of theorizing not only seventeenth-century religious ideologies, but also the nature of Early Modern subjectivity. (shrink)

In recent years, the popularity of the inimitable Slavoj Žižek has perhaps cast a shadow over the collective influence exerted by Slovenian intellectuals on modern day philosophy. Yet despite his image as an isolated genius, this timely book relocates Žižek as a thinker whose ideas are born of a specifically Slovenian context. Although only coming to international notice in the early 1990s, the Slovenian school needs to be understood as the culmination of a series of intellectual, artistic and political movements (...) inextricably connected to the quest for the succession of Slovenia from Yugoslavia. These developments in thought must also be seen in the light of one of the giants of Continental philosophy: Jacques Lacan.Featuring brand new interviews with three of its forerunners - Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dolar and Alenka Zupancic - this fascinating account details each philosopher's individual concerns, whilst shedding light on the complex genealogy and continuing development of the Slovenian Neo-Lacanian school. Rarely are we afforded such an opportunity to study the birth of a philosophy from a seminal moment in modern history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Slipping on Banana Peels, Tumbling into WellsPhilosophy and ComedyPaul A. Kottman (bio)Alenka Zupančič. The Odd One In: On Comedy. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2008.[T]he philosopher... is the jest, not only of Thracian handmaids but of the general herd, tumbling into wells and every sort of disaster through his inexperience [hupo apeirias].—Plato, Theaetetus 174cWhy stop philosophy’s most precious intrinsic comedy when it comes to comedy?—Alenka Zupančič, (...) The Odd One In1“Comedy,” writes Alenka Zupančič in The Odd One In, “draws our attention to the fact that something of our life lives on its own as we speak, that is to say, at any moment of our life” [218]. Reelaborating some of Jacques Lacan’s formulations regarding comedy, drive, and desire, Zupančič clarifies that this “something” is the “Real of human desire”— namely, “the incongruence of the reality of desire and drive with all those (also quite factual) outlines that determine our supposedly realistic reality” [218]. This extrapolation from Lacan frames Zupančič’s views on comedy and its subversive character; but it is her unique engagement with G. W. F. Hegel’s remarks on comedy—particularly the sections of the Phenomenology of Spirit in which Hegel tracks the passage from the Comedy of Aristophanes to Christianity—that give a distinctive arc to Zupančič’s highly original and generative approach to comedy and its subversive character. In this review essay, I will draw attention to some of the most original aspects of this critical appropriation of Hegel, while highlighting key elements of the text’s argumentative trajectory. Toward the end of this essay, I will also suggest ways that Hegel’s speculative remarks, which see the comic figure as symptomatic of a community that is not yet conscious of itself as such, might allow us to put into question some of Zupančič’s central claims regarding the subversive nature of both comedy and her own critical intervention.Zupančič’s reflections on comedy—which are not only innovative, but also delightfully readable—merit, in their own right, the attention of anyone interested in the intersection of literature, philosophy, and contemporary culture; but her text is all the more significant in light of the oft-remarked rarity of sustained philosophical reflections on comedy. Although there are a number of books on comedy as a literary genre, philosophical studies of comedy are surprisingly rare.1 Henri Bergson’s Le rire (published in 1900) [End Page 3] is perhaps the most well known. More recently, Simon Critchley has written about laughter, wit, and jokes in On Humour. Perhaps the most comprehensive philosophical account of comedy to date—Agnes Heller’s Immortal Comedy: The Comic Phenomenon in Art, Literature and Life (2005)—was published only three years before The Odd One In.2In contrast to Heller’s work, which offers a philosophical account of a variety of comic works and genres, and unlike these other earlier studies, which deal with the poetics of comedy and related phenomena such as laughter or jokes, Zupančič does not approach comedy as an object of inquiry that might be analyzed by philosophical categories or methods, nor even as a phenomenon that is extrinsic to philosophy. Instead, she sees comedy and philosophy as intrinsic to one another, such that the fate of philosophical activity is tied to the fate of the comical. In assessing Zupančič’s claims, therefore, I will strive less for a summary catalogue of the claims presented in the book than for a reelaboration of what I take to be her most provocative and important assertions regarding what she calls the “critical edge” shared by both philosophy and comedy [Zupančič 9].The Odd One In is the eighth title in the series Short Circuits, edited by Slavoj Žižek, in relation to whose writings Zupančič’s text clearly stands in intellectual and stylistic propinquity. (Žižek himself might be taken as a prime figure in whom comic and philosophical practices, in Zupančič’s sense, coincide.) The book opens and closes with a reminder that we too often mistake the subversive side of comedy for “a consolation... (shrink)

The Cartesian cogito—the principle articulated by Descartes that "I think, therefore I am"—is often hailed as the precursor of modern science. At the same time, the cogito's agent, the ego, is sometimes feared as the agency of manipulative domination responsible for all present woes, from patriarchal oppression to ecological catastrophes. Without psychoanalyzing philosophy, _Cogito and the Unconscious_ explores the vicissitudes of the cogito and shows that psychoanalyses can render visible a constitutive madness within modern philosophy, the point at which "I (...) think, therefore I am" becomes obsessional neurosis characterized by "If I stop thinking, I will cease to exist." Noting that for Lacan the Cartesian construct is the same as the Freudian "subject of the unconscious," the contributors follow Lacan's plea for a psychoanalytic return to the cogito. Along the path of this return, they examine the ethical attitude that befits modern subjectivity, the inherent sexualization of modern subjectivity, the impasse in which the Cartesian project becomes involved given the enigmatic status of the human body, and the Cartesian subject's confrontation with its modern critics, including Althusser, Bataille, and Dennett. In a style that has become familiar to Žižek's readers, these essays bring together a strict conceptual analysis and an approach to a wide range of cultural and ideological phenomena—from the sadist paradoxes of Kant's moral philosophy to the universe of Ayn Rand's novels, from the question "Which, if any, is the sex of the cogito?" to the defense of the cogito against the onslaught of cognitive sciences. Challenging us to reconsider fundamental notions of human consciousness and modern subjectivity, this is a book whose very Lacanian orthodoxy makes it irreverently transgressive of predominant theoretical paradigms. _Cogito and the Unconscious_ will appeal to readers interested in philosophy, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, and theories of ideology. _Contributors. _Miran Bozovic, Mladen Dolar, Alain Grosrichard, Marc de Kessel, Robert Pfaller, Renata Salecl, Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupancic. (shrink)

The Cartesian cogito—the principle articulated by Descartes that "I think, therefore I am"—is often hailed as the precursor of modern science. At the same time, the cogito's agent, the ego, is sometimes feared as the agency of manipulative domination responsible for all present woes, from patriarchal oppression to ecological catastrophes. Without psychoanalyzing philosophy, _Cogito and the Unconscious_ explores the vicissitudes of the cogito and shows that psychoanalyses can render visible a constitutive madness within modern philosophy, the point at which "I (...) think, therefore I am" becomes obsessional neurosis characterized by "If I stop thinking, I will cease to exist." Noting that for Lacan the Cartesian construct is the same as the Freudian "subject of the unconscious," the contributors follow Lacan's plea for a psychoanalytic return to the cogito. Along the path of this return, they examine the ethical attitude that befits modern subjectivity, the inherent sexualization of modern subjectivity, the impasse in which the Cartesian project becomes involved given the enigmatic status of the human body, and the Cartesian subject's confrontation with its modern critics, including Althusser, Bataille, and Dennett. In a style that has become familiar to Žižek's readers, these essays bring together a strict conceptual analysis and an approach to a wide range of cultural and ideological phenomena—from the sadist paradoxes of Kant's moral philosophy to the universe of Ayn Rand's novels, from the question "Which, if any, is the sex of the cogito?" to the defense of the cogito against the onslaught of cognitive sciences. Challenging us to reconsider fundamental notions of human consciousness and modern subjectivity, this is a book whose very Lacanian orthodoxy makes it irreverently transgressive of predominant theoretical paradigms. _Cogito and the Unconscious_ will appeal to readers interested in philosophy, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, and theories of ideology. _Contributors. _Miran Bozovic, Mladen Dolar, Alain Grosrichard, Marc de Kessel, Robert Pfaller, Renata Salecl, Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupancic. (shrink)